UNHCR office looted in Ghazni

A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in the town of Ghazni has been looted by armed gunmen, officials told IRIN on Thursday.

Though no staff, including an expatriate, was physically harmed, the attack has raised security concerns in the area, 120 km southwest of the Afghan capital, Kabul, prompting the refugee agency to increase security at its offices.

UNHCR spokesman Jack Redden said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, that three men armed with assault rifles broke into the UNHCR compound at 20:00 local time on Tuesday. "They locked the one international and seven local employees in a toilet."

The unidentified gunmen took away communications equipment, broke open the safe and stole an unspecified amount of cash, Redden said. They left behind a Thuriya telephone set on the lawn before leaving.

This is the second time a UNHCR office has come under attack in Afghanistan since the ousting of the Taliban last year.

Earlier this month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UNHCR offices in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were attacked with a grenade. There were no injuries, but buildings were partially damaged, raising concerns over security.

UNHCR spokeswoman in Afghanistan, Maki Shinohara, told IRIN from Kabul that the latest incident had no immediate impact on the overall programme of the refugee agency, which was helping in the voluntary repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees.

"The situation is definitely improving compared to the past two years or so, but this [looting] illustrates the fact that such things are still happening," Shinohara said, noting that security was still fragile in several parts of the country.

After nearly seven months of the installation of a new government in Afghanistan, security remains the key concern of the international community.

The UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, in his briefing to the UN Security Council in late July, cited security as one of the foremost challenges facing the new administration.

Shinohara said the eight UNHCR employees locked in the toilet by the armed men were all back at work.